In the world of sports fandom, correctness is currency.
Guess the winner of a game and you’re a genius. A philosopher. Einstein-meets-Aristotle with a touch of Jon Hamm (because being right is for hot people).
But if you so much as miss one piece of a 10-leg parlay, you are nothing. You’re a knuckle-dragging savage who probably doesn’t even watch the games. That’s why we feel such a rush of joy when we get to say: told you so.
Today, we’re doing just that. Some of these things I genuinely wrote and published on this website. Others have been said by hot take artists across the Twittersphere. Some are probably conversations I had in my own diseased brain late at night during the fever dream of Pac-12 After Dark.
Regardless, here are four finely aged predictions from the 2022 college football season that have fans uttering the three sweetest words in the English language.
Ohio State will be in the Playoff
Last week I explained that two of the saltiest groups of people in the world were A) Ohio State fans after the Buckeyes got dog-walked by Michigan for the second straight year, topped only by B) Ohio State haters once the Buckeyes got into the Playoff anyway.
Ta-daaa.
The messed up thing is that even though I just watched Ohio State get blown out by a team that is essentially a slightly less-imposing version of Georgia, I still kinda think the Buckeyes could beat the Bulldogs. Branding is a hell of a drug.
When Michigan is playing Georgia in the National Championship, you’ll find me rocking back and forth, foaming at the mouth saying, “You know, they DID just get blasted by Michigan and Georgia, but I really feel like Ohio State could take both of these teams.”
USC will be in the Playoff conversation. Also, USC’s defense will be its downfall
Ah, a two-for-one deal.
If you were one of the optimists who tapped USC as a fringe Playoff at the start of the season, congratulations. The Trojans were a weekly light show thanks to Heisman-caliber quarterback Caleb Williams and an embarrassment of riches out wide.
If you were one of the doubters who said USC’s defense would be wet garbage, gee, Nostradamus, how’d you guess?
Obviously, Williams’ hamstring injury in the first half of the Pac-12 Championship Game against Utah definitely hurt USC. That absolutely sucked. However, counterpoint: even the injured Williams probably could have broken five USC tackles on any given play, putting him in rare company with Utah’s incredibly beefy tight ends and most of Nevada’s septuagenarian population.
The BCS was fine, actually
Man, it would be so cool if college football had a system that pitted the two highest-ranked teams against one another. Like, imagine a Series of Bowls highlighted by a single Championship game. Seems cool.
The BCS had its flaws, but it totally hit the nail on the head assuming there were only two truly deserving teams. Don’t get me wrong, I love a first-round blowout as much as the next Notre Dame fan. I just feel like we maybe don’t need to see the Big Ten East runner-up’s linebackers try to stop Georgia’s running backs with a combination of arm tackles and asking nicely.
Stetson Bennett is the best quarterback in the nation
Ever since he first set foot on Georgia’s campus as a walk-on freshman in I believe 2004, Stetson Bennett has had to prove hater after hater wrong.
In 2020, he was allegedly the guy holding the Bulldogs back. In 2021, he was just keeping JT Daniels’ seat warm. Then he led Georgia to its first National Championship win in over 40 years, showed up to his Good Morning America interview on an entirely different plane of existence, and assured he would never spend another dime at a bar in Athens.
Bennett is undersized. He does NIL work for an Athens apartment complex. He looks like Timothee Chalamet portraying a youth pastor amidst a crisis of faith in a direct-to-streaming religious film.
And he will absolutely toast your defense if you let it anywhere near him.
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